Problems seeing USB mp3 player... any help?

["Paul Smith" <psmith@nortel.com>]

Hi all;

My wife bought me a Rage MP 256M MP3 player for my birthday.  I'm having
a devil of a time getting my Linux system to recognize it so I can stock
it up with k00l t00n3s.  When I plug it in, I get messages like this in
/var/log/syslog:

  May 31 01:17:09 homebase kernel: usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using address 4
  May 31 01:17:10 homebase kernel: usb 4-3: device not accepting address 4, error -71
  May 31 01:17:10 homebase kernel: usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using address 5
  May 31 01:17:10 homebase kernel: usb 4-3: device not accepting address 5, error -71
  May 31 01:18:12 homebase kernel: usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using address 6
  May 31 01:18:12 homebase kernel: usb 4-3: device not accepting address 6, error -71
  May 31 01:18:12 homebase kernel: usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using address 7
  May 31 01:18:13 homebase kernel: usb 4-3: device not accepting address 7, error -71

Sometimes I only get a few addresses, other times it tries up to at
least address 9.  Error -71 is EPROTO, so that doesn't help me much :-/.

I've googled and grepped and gnashed (teeth :-)) but haven't found
anything really relevant.  Most of the docs I find are all really old:
for 2.4 kernels and stuff.  They don't seem to say much--am I missing
the docs?  I tried booting with acpi=off but besides breaking some other
stuff that didn't make any difference.  I checked /proc/interrupts and
they do seem to go up when I plug in the player.


I'm running Debian "sarge", quite up to date, but with my own kernel:
2.6.9 downloaded from kernel.org with no patches applied (unfortunately
I have a limited set of kernels I can use, since I need to use a
Contivity VPN client w/ kernel modules to get into work).  I do have the
USB kernel config settings:

  CONFIG_USB=y
  CONFIG_USB_DEVICEFS=y
  CONFIG_USB_EHCI_HCD=m
  CONFIG_USB_EHCI_SPLIT_ISO=y
  CONFIG_USB_OHCI_HCD=m
  CONFIG_USB_UHCI_HCD=m
  CONFIG_USB_MIDI=m
  CONFIG_USB_ACM=m
  CONFIG_USB_PRINTER=m
  CONFIG_USB_STORAGE=m

and various other USB options are set.  I have SCSI enabled, and SCSI
disk support enabled.  I have the hotplug package installed.  If I use
lsmod I see these (among others of course):

  ehci_hcd               39556  0 
  uhci_hcd               28428  0 
  usb_storage            60224  0 
  scsi_mod              106444  1 usb_storage

For hardware I have one of those VIA on-board USB modules.  It has 4 USB
ports (in the back of the system--grr!), and lspci says:

  0000:00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80)
  0000:00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80)
  0000:00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80)
  0000:00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 82)

It _seems_ like this means only one of them is a USB 2.0 port (which I
need for my player).  But, I cannot figure out which one: they all look
the same to me.  I've tried all four of them, though, and none of them
"just works".

One odd thing is my logs all talk about devices as above, numbered 4-1,
4-2, 4-3, and 4-4 depending on which USB port in the back I plug it
into, but lspci and the kernel boot log lists them as 10.0, 10.1, 10.2,
and 10.3.  I don't know how they relate (is it just the obvious, 4-1 <->
10.0, etc.?)


Any help or hints or places to look next?

-- 
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 Paul D. Smith <psmith@nortel.com>           HASMAT--HA Software Mthds & Tools
 "Please remain calm...I may be mad, but I am a professional." --Mad Scientist
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   These are my opinions---Nortel Networks takes no responsibility for them.